Natural ways to bring down PH

[Adam Garrett-Clark]

Hey Everyone,

Does Lemon juice work to reduce PH in a system?

I bought some rock wool to start some lettuce seeds and the back of the package said to use lemon juice to reduce the water ph to 5.5 to start the seeds. 

I figured this would work in my system as well, which has been consistently coming up with a PH of 8.2, so I squeezed a few lemons into the system and tested the PH the next day and I noticed that the PH went down to 8. So I squeezed a bunch more lemons in. I put about 12 lemons worth of juice into my barelponic system, about 55 gallons of water.

I think the answer to my question is no, because my I tested the levels today, and my PH is still at 8, and all my other levels are weak. I'm about 2 months into cycling my system. My amonia already spiked and was consistently reeding 0.25 ppm, now its at 0. My Nitrites were reading 5ppm now they are 2 ppm and my Nitrates which were at 40ppm are now at 0. Did I just kill all my bacteria? Is all this lemon juice bad for the fish? 

I only have 2 gold fish that have survived the cycling. Should I add more fish? Should I change the water and start again? I have a lot of new growth in my grow beds right now.  is the lemon juice bad for the plants?

[Jon Parr]

I knew it, had you pegged for a polyphasic sleeper all along. I've tried for two years to adapt to the uberman sleep schedule, and I just can't do it, yet. I'm not giving up though. I've sort of morphed into no pattern at all, and I'm ok with that I guess. Uberman, as I'm sure you're aware, is 15 minutes of sleep every 4 hrs. Dymaxion is 30 minutes every 6 hrs, right? I've made it as far as 6 days into the uberman when my freakin' alarm battery went dead. Anyway, an easier schedule called the Everyman is a core sleep of 2-4 hrs, and a few naps through the day. Works great. And it's a big deal to me because I used to crave sleep, needing about 10 hrs a night and still tired all day.
Someday I want to schedule a vacation and focus on the uberman again, because what always busts my flow is that work bullshit thing you speak of. Cool Vlad, you'll have to give me some pointers. If it would snow in here like the weather you said you're having, maybe I could pull it off, need that excuse to not work for a bit. Christ, it was 75 today w/ lows in the mid 50's tonight.

[Eric Warwick]

http://somethingofthatilk.com/index.php?id=6 This should give you a few laughs (smiling emotocon).
Jon Parr said:

I knew it, had you pegged for a polyphasic sleeper all along. I've tried for two years to adapt to the uberman sleep schedule, and I just can't do it, yet. I'm not giving up though. I've sort of morphed into no pattern at all, and I'm ok with that I guess. Uberman, as I'm sure you're aware, is 15 minutes of sleep every 4 hrs. Dymaxion is 30 minutes every 6 hrs, right? I've made it as far as 6 days into the uberman when my freakin' alarm battery went dead. Anyway, an easier schedule called the Everyman is a core sleep of 2-4 hrs, and a few naps through the day. Works great. And it's a big deal to me because I used to crave sleep, needing about 10 hrs a night and still tired all day.
Someday I want to schedule a vacation and focus on the uberman again, because what always busts my flow is that work bullshit thing you speak of. Cool Vlad, you'll have to give me some pointers. If it would snow in here like the weather you said you're having, maybe I could pull it off, need that excuse to not work for a bit. Christ, it was 75 today w/ lows in the mid 50's tonight.

[Vlad Jovanovic]

Yeah, I cant do it either (Uberman), and after a while realized that I don't want to be that rigorous anyways. A lot of it depends on the season of the year and what it is that I am doing, either repetitively each 24 hours, and/or in combination with what it is I need to get done in that next block of time (the coming weeks/months. This seems to work much better for me (not to mention actually doable for me) than strict adherence to Uberman (though it is kind of fun to mess yourself up trying :) I think both variants of the Everyman with some excursions into Dymaxion patterns here and there makes good sense. I'm willing to bet that given enough time you'll notice a pattern emerge from what your seeing as a "no pattern at all" scenerio.

It took me about 6 years of 'trying'  just to be able to consciously perform the seemingly simple task of raising my hand to my face and looking at it (ala Carlos Castenada) while dreaming. That was the game changer there. Everything else evolved very quickly from there (well from my perspective anyways). Between that, and polyphase, I'm dreaming within seconds, have decent control over movement and content, creative problem solving while dreaming is very cool etc...and wake up after 20 min feeling like I've slept 7 or 8 hours. Of course polyphase is only really viable while living free-lance, or better yet, no-lance. For the last 15 years or so my pattern has pretty much been 3 years of a 'job job type job', 3 years freelance consulting, 3 years no lance. Then that all repeats. I'd like to ease out the 3 years job job type job portion if possible. Although engineering/consulting can be "very" interesting depending on the project and who you are working with. (Ok, so it's really not that interesting, not for very long anyways)...

We should probably put away the box cutters and give this thread back to it's rightful owner now 

(Good stuff though, I don't really ever get a chance to talk about this sort of thing with anyone).

Adam, how are your two goldfish doing? What's happening with the ammonia/nitrite/nitrates ? 

[Eric Warwick]

Aren't you going to demand a ransom?!

Vlad Jovanovic said:

Yeah, I cant do it either (Uberman), and after a while realized that I don't want to be that rigorous anyways. 

We should probably put away the box cutters and give this thread back to it's rightful owner now 

[Carey Ma]

Threadjackers united! A force of its own...hehe...sorry, sorry, I can't help myself...

I've only had two paying jobs in my life and hope never to have one again. I started sleeping only four hours a night while I was in collage some thirty years ago. I did burn out about a decade ago but am back to four to six hours a night with naps during the day, whenever feel tired. There is always so much to do and learn, twenty four hours is just not enough. I use to wish I didn't need sleep. Data on Star-Trek is so lucky.

[Jon Parr]

Ahhh, I had guessed you were in on polyphasic sleep, too, Carey.  Eric, funny clip, are you demented enough to deprive yourself of sleep, too? Adam, apologies for the threadjacking. 

So to recap natural (non-bottled, non-prepackaged, local) pH reducers:

Good:

   Sphagnum  moss

   Driftwood

   Oak leaves

Not so good:

   Lemon juice

[Jon Parr]

http://aquaponicscommunity.com/group/threadjackers/forum/topics/do-...

[Bryan Acred]

Wouldn't that have the opposite effect?

Todd Sowell said:

Try hydrated lime and potassium carbonate

 

Todd

[TCLynx]

Correct Bryan,

   Hydrated lime (calcium hydroxide) and potassium carbonate or potassium bicarbonate will raise pH.

[Tom Parsons]

This may sound funny.  One of my systems has peppers in it.  The ph level is a full point lower than my other systems.  In the future i plan on planting 1/4 of my systems to peppers to try to keep the ph down.  In addition we collect the rain water in 950 gal tanks and put that in your tank.

[Eric Warwick]

Correlation does not equal causation. That is all.

Tom Parsons said:

This may sound funny.  One of my systems has peppers in it.  The ph level is a full point lower than my other systems.  In the future i plan on planting 1/4 of my systems to peppers to try to keep the ph down.  In addition we collect the rain water in 950 gal tanks and put that in your tank.

[Adam Garrett-Clark]

No problem guys, threadjack away. Interesting stuff about the polyphase sleeping schedule. My levels appear to have balanced out, everthing is at zero and the fish and plants look happy to my untrained eye. I still have about 8.2 ph, but I did have two major water losses due to plugged pipes so my system still has a lot of Bay Area tap water in it. THose two fish died eventually and I replaced them with about 12 more feeder goldfish. every few days two would die off until now I seem to have stabalized at three healthy happy fish. I added a few aquatic plants for shelter and I added mineral suppments to the water because I learned that Bay Area tap water is very soft and lacks minerals. These two changes may be why the system seems to be healthier. I'm thinking about adding some more fish, anyone think thats a bad idea? I've got a 55 gallon tank and lots of little sprouting plants in the grow bed along with snap peas that are starting to fruit.

Jon Parr said:

Ahhh, I had guessed you were in on polyphasic sleep, too, Carey.  Eric, funny clip, are you demented enough to deprive yourself of sleep, too? Adam, apologies for the threadjacking. 

So to recap natural (non-bottled, non-prepackaged, local) pH reducers:

Good:

   Sphagnum  moss

   Driftwood

   Oak leaves

Not so good:

   Lemon juice